Talk:Zumwalt's Skirmish Room/@comment-27404954-20160912231134/@comment-27404954-20160913053403
The Lamentation Threnody reacts immediately, along with the extra Inward Light-class battleship in the heretofore undamaged right horn. They blink simultaneously in a move reminiscent of castling, and the PCV ships' shots pass through empty space. The Lamentation Threnody, meanwhile -- now in the right horn -- fires its maneuvering thrusters to "lean" backwards, pointing its rift projector up at the ships above, who had been herded slightly closer together by two Invictus-class battlecruisers of the right horn. They had launched their complement of warp-field distortion missiles, forcing the Prometheus ships to shy closer together or be torn apart by the unstable distortions. The rift projector crackled with quicksilver light, and up among the closer-packed PCV ships, several higher dimensions merged with realspace simultaneously, tearing a hole in space and time. The rift only held for a moment, but when it was safe to look at where the Prometheus craft had been, there was no sign of any of them left beyond the occasional severed piece of debris and a high, keening "scream." One of the Interceptor-class ships and one of the Corsairs had survived the blast, though the Corsair ''had been hit by spilloff and was missing half of its former mass, its atmosphere venting into space and its power systems slowly failing. Before the ''Interceptor could react, it was hit by a well-placed shot from the right horn's ANF Messiah's Hand, and the 42m railgun slug pierced it through an uncovered, thin part of the flight deck. Due to the carrier's continuing launch operations, not only was the Interceptor severed at that point, but the interior of the ship erupted in a firestorm of cooking-off ammunition, exploding fighters, and burning fuel, causing it to be burnt out in a matter of seconds. The Invictus-classes blinked below the Event Horizons and Undertakers, where they have no guns -- thereby also disabling the MCM lock -- and opened fire. The Inward Light battleship -- the ANF Shuttered Lamp ''-- activated its railgun systems and emptied its capacitors on the Undertaker, shearing it at an angle through the "hole" in its fuselage. The ''Undertaker underwent explosive decompression and soon detonated, a lucky shot having cut one of its reactors. Meanwhile, the Invictus-classes launched half their complement of Earthshatter missiles. The Earthshatters -- originally intended for Neo-Earth -- nevertheless bored their way admirably through the Event Horizons’ armor, and their nuclear warheads detonated inside the ships' atmospheres. Due to bulkheading, only one was totally lost by virtue of having a massive hole ripped in its hull. The other managed to roll to the side and take the missiles on its side instead of on the bottom, reducing the size of the hole. However, before it managed to do more than significantly damage one of the Invictus-class battlecruisers, it is finished off by the four of them combined. The damaged Invictus -- the ANF Arc Constant -- launched its remaining missiles at the PCV ships that had moved towards the left horn and then warped out, being unfit for further combat. Meanwhile, on the left horn, the ANF Asmodei -- one of the four Orcus-class ships -- was lost to the Prometheus concentrated fire, rupturing and becoming inoperable after getting off two shots from its railgun systems. The two 42m slugs tore apart one of the Event Horizons, however, leaving the remaining two Inward Light-class battleships and two Invictus-class battlecruisers with one Event Horizon, four Corsairs, and three Undertakers to deal with. Before the Prometheus ships could get an accurate firing solution, the Aneph ships blink under them, forcing the heavier ships to have to "flip" and reacquire their targets before opening fire. The Aneph ships had no restrictions, however, and fired off multiple 2040 volleys directly into the Prometheus ships' undersides while taking evasive action from the Corsairs' ''bottom guns. The right horn now wheels around and falls upon the Prometheus ships from behind in a split-S hook, trapping them between the remains of the left horn and the right horn. The ANF ''Messiah's Hand opens up on one of the Undertakers with its remaining charged railgun banks, cutting it apart by the penetrative power and size of the slugs. It then shifts its focus to the other two, firing multiple salvos from its 2040s. Meanwhile, the four Invictus-class ships target the Corsairs, and the five Inward Lights split into a group of one and four to assist. The single Inward Light joins the Invictus-classes in attacking the Corsairs, while the other four move in around the Messiah's Hand and assist in the assault on the Undertakers. The core group, meanwhile, re-forms and joins the attack on the final Prometheus ships, sending in the Shuttered Lamp along with the three remaining Invictus-class ships. The Shuttered Lamp and one Invictus joins the Corsair-hunting group, while the other two join the assault on the last two Undertakers. One Orcus-class ship -- the Unrelenting -- of the core stays with the Kaldor Draigo, ''the ''Leman Russ, and the Lamentation Threnody, continuing to jam communications, while the other -- the Lilith -- activates its railgun systems to provide long-ranged fire support against the remaining PCV ships. The Kaldor Draigo and the Leman Russ, while comparatively slower to launch than usual, are able to be free of enemy fighters anyway. The fighters from the Interceptors -- about 350 -- came down upon the core group, only to find themselves hit by x-ray synchotron blasts. The PCV squadrons attempt to restart their engines, only to find themselves picked off by hundreds of titanium-sapphire laser pulses from the point-defense/anti-aircraft turrets of the core. Meanwhile, the Kaldor Draigo -- primarily carrying Chrysaor bombers -- and the Leman Russ -- primarily carrying Griffon-C fighters -- join air wings. Whatever PCV fighters managed to loop out of the point-defense range in time, they find themselves beset by nearly 200 Griffon-C fighters, who dive in plasma canister guns and rail cannons blazing with traceries of light. The other 200 escort the 400 Chrysaor bombers in towards the Prometheus ships that had attacked the left horn, preparing to activate and deploy multiple launcher tubes' worth of anti-capital-ship torpedoes, along with subsystem-seeking swarm missiles.